5.  The applicant was born in 1949 and lives in Lviv.
6.  In the 1990s a group of scholars, including the applicant, who was a history professor at the Lviv Institute of Internal Affairs at the relevant time, conducted research and a series of field studies, resulting in a manuscript on the history and archaeology of the Kosiv area between the ninth and eighteenth centuries.
7.  In July 1997 L., a private publishing house based in Ivano-Frankivsk (“the publishing house”), published five hundred copies of the book following a private donation from a local business, apparently solicited with the assistance of the Kosivskyy District Administration (“the District Administration”). The book was published under the title The Kosiv Area Antiquities (“Cтарожитності Косівщини”). The cover pages of the book stated that it was an “academic edition” containing “essays about history” published under the aegis of the Lviv Institute of Internal Affairs and intended “for scholars, students, teachers, ethnographers, and all those interested in the history of the Kosiv area”.
8.  Pages 12-13 of the book featuring the applicant’s essay entitled “From the Past of the Kosiv Area” described the economic hardships faced by the local inhabitants in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In between two paragraphs concerning the above period of time, the applicant included the following text:
“Today, as in the old days, complaints are the only means of protest available to villagers and townsfolk against the arbitrariness of the local administration ... M.L. [full name given], the mayor of the village of Kosmach, behaves like an omnipotent feudal prince. Before the last elections he disbanded the village election committee, selected people loyal to him as new members and submitted the list for approval to the district authorities five days after the legal deadline had passed. This election committee took an extra day for ‘the counting’ of the votes cast for M.L. and his chosen deputies. Subsequently he acted outrageously towards L.V. [full name given], a category one disabled citizen. Following a decision by the village council, his plot of land was taken away from him and ownership transferred to the carpenter who had constructed M.L.’s summer kitchen. The Kosivskyy District Council (headed by M.Kh. [full name given]) knows about these shocking examples of corruption; however, it has never found the time to redress them. Meanwhile, it wasted no time in agreeing on the restitution to M.L. of a house which had been confiscated from his father-in-law (who had once committed aggravated embezzlement of State property) and of which ownership had since been transferred to the Yablunivka village hospital. It is such a shame that some of the officials in the Kosivskyy District are not true servants of the people, but leeches and traitors of their countrymen, consciously undermining the authority of the young State in the eyes of the population. As in the olden days with respect to the feudal lords, today there is no redress against them; that is why they act so daringly and with impunity. It is because of such fortuitous and corrupt ‘rulers’ that the independent Ukraine cannot rise on its feet.”
9.  On 12 December 1997 M.L. drafted a statement of claim against the applicant and the publishing house, seeking the retraction of the above passage, republication of the applicant’s essay with the relevant passage removed, and compensation in respect of non-pecuniary damage. M.L. alleged that the applicant had received fifty copies of the book personally. The other four hundred and fifty copies had, at the material time, been in the hands of the District Administration, who as patron and sponsor of the field studies and the publication, had intended to distribute the books to libraries and local schools. M.L. also maintained that the applicant’s statements about him had been unsubstantiated, insulting and defamatory. In addition, the statements in question appeared in the context of a passage about the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which made them grossly irrelevant to the purpose of the publication.
10.  On 30 April 1998 M.L.’s claim form was stamped as “received” by the Kosivskyy District Court.
11.  On 29 May 1998 that court transferred the case for consideration to the Ivano-Frankivsk City Court (“the City Court”) in the same town as the publishing house. On various dates the applicant unsuccessfully challenged the territorial jurisdiction of the court, seeking a transfer of the case to his local court in Lviv.
12.  On 3 March 1999 the City Court commenced its examination of the case.
13.  Between March 1999 and January 2000 the City Court scheduled and adjourned four hearings. Two of them were adjourned owing to financial constraints precluding the court from sending out correspondence in good time, the third on account of the judge having a scheduling conflict and the fourth as a representative of the publishing house was absent.
14.  On 18 February 2000 the court held a hearing and admitted the District Administration as a third party in the proceedings. At the applicant’s request the court adjourned the hearing to order archive material which, according to him, would prove the veracity of some of his statements.
15.  Between February and October 2000 the court scheduled four more hearings, which were adjourned as one or two parties failed to appear.
16.  On 5 October 2000 the City Court held a hearing where the applicant, M.L. and a representative of the publishing house confirmed that the applicant had received fifty copies of the book and the remaining four hundred and fifty copies had been placed at the disposal of the District Administration.
17.  On the same date the City Court delivered its judgment. It found that the disputed statements were false and defamatory and ordered the District Administration to return the four hundred and fifty copies of the book in its possession to the publishing house. It further obliged the latter to reprint the book at the applicant’s expense after having removed the disputed passage from it. Lastly, the court awarded M.L. 5,000 Ukrainian hryvnias (UAH) in respect of non-pecuniary damage, to be paid by the applicant.
18.  On 13 October 2000 the applicant lodged a “cassation appeal” against this judgment. He noted, in particular, that there was no evidence whatsoever that the disputed statements had been “disseminated”, and that any person other than M.L. himself had read them. He also submitted that he had personally received one hundred copies of the book, which he had destroyed after the action had been lodged against him. The remaining copies having been at the disposal of the District Administration, the book could not have been deemed “disseminated”.
19.  M.L. filed an objection in which he submitted, in particular, that a number of officials of the District Administration had read the disputed statements, that some copies of the book had already been distributed to the school libraries, and that the applicant himself had earlier claimed that he had distributed fifty copies of the book. He also submitted letters from the Head and Deputy Head of the District Administration in which they expressed indignation with the fact that the applicant had published a gratuitous attack on M.L.’s reputation and suggested that he may have done so in revenge for M.L.’s refusal to allot a plot of land to the applicant’s mother.
20.  On 31 October 2000 the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Court (“the Regional Court”) dismissed the applicant’s cassation appeal and the judgment of 5 October 2000 became final.
21.  The District Administration did not return its copies of the book to the publishing house. According to the applicant, it instead distributed a number of books to various recipients, having cut out the pages which contained the disputed text.
22.  On 11 May 2001 the Presidium of the Regional Court quashed the judgments of 5 and 31 October 2000 following a request by the applicant for a supervisory review (протест) and remitted the case to the City Court for fresh examination.
23.  In summer 2001 the applicant lodged a counterclaim against M.L. within the framework of the initial defamation proceedings. He referred to a number of purported shortcomings in M.L.’s official conduct as mayor, and submitted that by complaining to the authorities about the publication, the mayor had simply sought to compromise the applicant’s reputation among his colleagues and the general public. The applicant further complained that M.L. had published a disparaging article about him in a local newspaper, and sought compensation for non-pecuniary damage and the retraction of several purportedly defamatory statements made in the article at issue. This counter-claim was joined by the City Court for examination together with the defamation claim brought against the applicant.
24.  On 5 September 2001 the City Court transferred the case to the Kosivskyy District Court for examination. The applicant appealed against that decision, seeking a transfer of the case to his local court.
25.  On 30 October 2001 the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Court of Appeal (the former Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Court) ordered the case to be remitted to the City Court, having noted that that court had already started examining the case, and that there were no grounds for the case to be transferred to another court. On several further occasions the City Court rejected requests by the applicant for the case to be transferred to his local court and for the presiding judge of the City Court to be removed from the case.
26.  Between October 2001 and October 2002 some five hearings were adjourned on account of the applicant’s failure to appear.
27.  On 11 October 2002 the City Court heard the case and delivered its judgment, allowing M.L.’s claim in part and dismissing the applicant’s counterclaim. The legal part of the judgment concerning M.L.’s claim stated as follows:
“Having heard the parties [and] having examined the materials in the case file, the court considers that the claim should be allowed in part on the following grounds.
Statements that the mayor [M.L.], ‘an omnipotent feudal prince’, had brutally breached the election legislation ... are rebutted by the decisions of the Kosivskyy District Court of 13 June 1994 and the civil division of the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Court of 19 July 1994 ... from which it follows that the claimant had not breached the election law, as the claim made by the group of deputies ... seeking an annulment of the lists of the district election committees was dismissed. Statements that [M.L.] had acted outrageously towards [L.V.] ... are rebutted by the decision of the Kosmach Village Council of 14 March 1994 to grant ownership of a plot of land to [L.V.]; and also the statements concerning the settlement of the matter ... concerning restitution of the ... house ... are rebutted by the decision of the Kosivskyy District Court of 12 October 1994 in respect of the claim by [O.L. (M.L.’s spouse)] against Y.S. ... concerning the annulment of the privatisation certificate issued in Y.S.’s name ... .
The court considers that ... the applicant arbitrarily used the aegis of the Lviv Institute of Internal Affairs ... in publishing the work... [and] inserted on pages 12-13 statements unsubstantiated by evidence.
Regard being had to the liability of the [applicant], the gravity of the harm inflicted on the plaintiff as a public official ..., the fact that the publication of the false statements negatively affected his image in the eyes of the ... district administration ..., his acquaintances and his fellow villagers; ... the fact that 450 copies of the publication had been widely read ([by] libraries, schools and the district administration) and the fact that fifty copies had been taken by [the applicant], some of them already having been disseminated, and regard also being had to the time invested by the plaintiff in the judicial examination of his case, the direct liability of [the applicant] in inflicting harm, the court considers that some compensation in respect of non-pecuniary damage should be awarded”.
28.  The City Court next awarded M.L. UAH 5,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage, to be paid by the applicant, and ordered that the disputed statements be retracted. The relevant passage of the operative part of the judgment read as follows:
“the publishing house L. shall publish erratum sheets (додатки) to the book The Kosiv Area Antiquities, retracting the statements (mentioned above) that do not reflect reality, to be paid for by [the applicant].”
29.  The applicant appealed. He challenged, in particular, the court’s findings that the impugned information in the book had been disseminated widely, claiming that the court had not established who had disseminated his book and exactly who had read it.
30.  On 12 February 2003 the Regional Court upheld the findings of the City Court with respect to M.L.’s claim, endorsing its reasoning as relevant and sufficient. At the same time, the court found that no sufficient reasons had been stated for rejecting the applicant’s counterclaim and remitted it to the City Court for fresh examination.
31.  The applicant lodged a cassation appeal, in which he referred to Article 10 of the Convention and the provisions of national law guaranteeing freedom of speech, alleging that the judgments against him were indicative of political repression and seeking to have the findings of the lower courts with respect to M.L.’s claim overturned. The applicant maintained, in particular, that the final three sentences challenged by the mayor had been his value judgments concerning unnamed public officials and could not have been deemed defamatory to the mayor. He further maintained that he could not afford to pay the damages. Moreover, whether M.L. had actually suffered any damage had never been established. In particular, the District Administration had received four hundred and fifty out of five hundred copies of the book, which had been in its possession since the day the action had been lodged. The District Administration had later distributed some of those books to the public, in breach of the court order of 5 October 2000 requiring it to return them to the publishing house for reprinting. Nevertheless, the disputed statements had not reached the public, as employees of the District Administration had cut out the controversial pages, in breach of the authors’ copyright. What had become of the other fifty copies of the book had never been established. Even if members of the public had obtained access to the disputed statements, this could not have affected the mayor’s reputation in any significant way, since the applicant had only recapitulated and reported information that had already been common public knowledge. In support of this allegation, the applicant submitted copies of numerous newspaper articles criticising the mayor and statements by individuals claiming that they had been offended by him in various ways. The applicant maintained that these documents served as sufficient evidence that his statements had been true, and that he could not understand how to draft a retraction of the true statements.
32.  The District Administration filed objections to the applicant’s cassation appeal. It contended, in particular, that they had not cut out any pages from the disputed book before distributing it.
33.  M.L. also filed objections to the applicant’s cassation appeal. He noted, in particular, that the applicant’s allegations that the non-pecuniary damage award was disproportionate with respect to his income were speculative, since he had never disclosed his income.
34.  On 18 March 2003 the City Court stayed the examination of the applicant’s counterclaim against M.L. pending consideration of the cassation appeal.
35.  On 1 June 2004 the Supreme Court of Ukraine rejected the applicant’s request for leave to appeal in cassation.
36. The Bailiff Service instituted enforcement proceedings against the applicant, in the course of which he was bound to pay the judgment debt in instalments of 20% of his main income (retirement pension). It appears that the debt was paid in full by June 2007.
37.  Between July 2004 and April 2005 the City Court adjourned some seven hearings in the case concerning the applicant’s counterclaim against M.L., either on account of the parties’ absence or the unavailability of recording equipment.
38.  On 18 April 2005 the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Department of Education and Science informed the applicant that it had received fifty copies of the book from the District Administration in 1998, thirty-five of which had been distributed to local schools, others remaining in the Department’s library. None of the copies received had pages missing. The Department also noted that M.L., acting as a private person, had distributed erratum sheets to the book recepients, notifying them that the statements criticising him had been deemed false and defamatory by the courts.
39.  On 16 November 2005 the City Court rejected the applicant’s defamation claim against M.L. as unsubstantiated and vexatious.
40.  On 13 January 2006 the Regional Court upheld that judgment, and on 21 January 2008 the Rivne Regional Court of Appeal, acting as a court of cassation, rejected a request by the applicant for leave to appeal in cassation.
41.  On 23 April 2007 the City Court rejected a claim made by the applicant against the bailiffs who had enforced the judgment of 11 October 2002. It appears from the case file that he did not pursue that claim any further.
42.  On 25 April 2007 the City Court rejected a claim made by the applicant against the publishing house for its alleged failure to comply with the judgment of 11 October 2002. It appears from the case file that the applicant did not pursue that claim any further either.
43.  In May 2015 the applicant instituted proceedings against M.L. in the City Court. He claimed, in particular, that he had unlawfully published a “pseudo-retraction” of the applicant’s statements found defamatory, which resulted in the breach of the applicant’s copyright and denigration of his dignity. It appears that the proceedings are currently pending.